Reply To: Its more common than one might think.

[Charlotte Lapin]

My doctor told me essentially the same thing. Crossdressing is much more common than most anyone’s personal experience would indicate.

[soapbox]

My take on why it’s such a hidden thing and a source of so much shame for men is at odds with what appears to be the prevailing theory, though.  When patriarchy was a real thing, and not the all-purpose feminist excuse it has now become, men could dress flamboyantly, and the more flamboyant the more it signaled high social status.  No, this donning of extravagant attire was not deemed crossdressing per se.  But to modern eyes, styles of that era continue to be admired when it comes to traditionally female attire, but men costumed in period accurate dress in dramatizations nowadays are usually the clownish, stupid, or sinister characters.  Literal male to female crossdressing, at least among the upper classes, was surprising well-tolerated as recently as Victorian times in parts of Europe.  In many parts of Asia, it never has been treated as a serious issue.  Heck, tea houses and bars staffed with young men dressed in maid uniforms are a mainstream phenomenon in Tokyo, and while women’s rights have made significant advancements in Japan, it’s still very much an “man’s world” there.

Now, in the west, we find ourselves in a situation where GGs can dress as feminine or as masculine as they like, but that option is not accorded to men.  This correlates with a current collapse of respect for male authority, to the point where such is deemed to be either evil or comic (see “mansplaining” for example).  Gillette infamously tried to sell razors to men while branding them as “toxic.”

Passage of anti-crossdressing laws in the US temporally correlate with the rise in the power of the women’s suffrage movement, an interesting coincidence, at very least.  I will also point out how many of the ladies on this site lament how rare it is to find GGs who tolerate, much less embrace, our crossdressing.  GGs have a huge influence on what is deemed to be normative male behavior, and this influence is only amplified as their general authority grows.

[/soapbox]